Introduction Payasam

Food is the ultimate commodity that this whole humanity fights for. A perfect weekend plan comes up with hanging out with friends and planning to go for lunch. Biryani or whatever the food we plan to eat, every person always finishes up with a dessert. It’s a tradition all people follow at functions, festivals, or get-together parties.
The only dessert of South India that never changes and a famous dessert in India is Payasam. Let’s see some of the facts about Payasam and their history.

History of Payasam

Payasam is a sweet dessert that originated in India. The word ‘Payas’ means ‘Milk’. The dish consists of three common items like rice, milk, and sugar. Indian people in each state have differences in their recipes and they improvised and created more varieties of Payasam. There are over 60 plus varieties of Payasam recipes, some of them are healthy and some of them are sweet.

The history of Payasam has many stories. The lord Krishna took an incarnation as a sage and went to meet the king of Ambalapuzha. The sage challenged the king in a game of chess. To make the game interesting the king offered to raise the stakes. The sage asked to give him grains of rice as the price.
But on one condition, the king should place a grain of rice first on the board and double it after every chess move. As the game goes on and the king places the rice grains over and over. At the end of the game, the sage wins and by seeing the rice grains it was so huge that they weigh a trillion. By seeing the shocked face of the king Lord Krishna revealed his true form.
He told the king to give this rice to the devotees who visit his temple in Ambalapuzha in the form of Payasam. This is how the dish Payasam was familiar to the people. The recipe was found by accident when an engineer’s son explained his plan to his father when he dropped a rice ball in milk. The recipe was born and was named Goyinda goti.
This is how the recipe was created and people improvised and made changes to the recipes and found many varieties.

The Payasam recipe has so many varieties and differs around states in India. The North Indians use only rice, milk, and sugar. The South Indians use Jaggery for the recipe for different tastes and health. Let’s see the famous Pal Payasam recipe preparation.

Ingredients: Rice, Milk, Water, Sugar, Ghee, and Seasonal nuts.

First in a pan, pour some ghee in it and add the required amount of rice. After boiling them, add a little water. By doing this, the rice will get boiled with ghee. We need to boil half the rice in this and the remaining half in the milk.
After a few minutes add the milk to the same pan and boil them. While boiling, add the required amount of sugar in it and stir them well. After boiling it, add Elaichi or saffron to the milk. In another pan add some ghee and add the nuts like cashew, raisins, and badam and fry them.
We need to fry them to become golden brown and add them to the milk pan. After a few more minutes of boiling the tasty Pal Payasams is ready to serve.
Payasams is made when any festival arrives or people who plan on conducting a feast. People like to have payasams in different ways. Some people like to have them in a glass and some people use appalam and pour them into a banana leaf and have them. But the tradition is to have them in banana leaves. So let’s have a cup of sweet Payasams and enjoy them happily.